"Kennedy was humiliated at a meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna the following June [1961] as the Soviet tyrant berated him on his bungling at the Bay of Pigs. James Reston, Associate Editor of the New York Times, reported that as a result of this meeting, Khrushchev felt ready to 'put offensive missiles into Cuba.' Reston, in an article published in the N.Y.Times, Jan. 18, 1966, stated that Kennedy told him after the Vienna conference, that in order to make American power 'credible' after the Bay of Pigs, he would intensify the war in Vietnam 'not because the situation on the ground demanded it in Vietnam,' but because he 'wanted to prove a diplomatic point, not a military point.' This diplomatic point cost America almost 60,000 lives and another defeat."
See also, Scotty: James B. Reston and The Rise and Fall of American Journalism, By John F. Stacks Little, Brown and Company 384 pp. To wit,
"In June 1961 John F. Kennedy attended two summit meetings in Vienna. The first offered a blustery encounter with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, eager to establish his mastery over the young American president. At length, a visibly shaken Kennedy muttered, 'It will be a cold winter.' Ten minutes after leaving Khrushchev, JFK had his second high-level encounter in the Austrian capital, this one conducted behind drawn curtains in the American Embassy.
"'How was it?' asked James 'Scotty' Reston, columnist and Washington bureau chief for The New York Times.
"'Worst thing in my life,' said Kennedy. 'He savaged me.' As Reston jotted notes ('Not the usual bullshit. There is a look a man has when he has to tell the truth.') the president vowed stiffer resistance to Communist encroachment in Berlin and South Vietnam." [end excerpt]
Kennedy had to prove that in fact he was "tough." He felt that he had no choice after being savaged by the leader of the Soviet Union in front of the world.